Convicted murderer who pleaded for death electrocuted in Virginia

This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.

JARRATT, Va. — A man who strangled his prison cellmate and vowed to continue killing if he wasn’t executed has been put to death in Virginia’s electric chair.

Robert Gleason was the first executed in the U.S. this year and the first to chose to die by electrocution since 2010. Virginia is one of nine other states in which inmates can choose between electrocution and lethal injection.

Gleason was serving life in prison for a 2007 murder when he killed his cellmate is 2009. He strangled another inmate in 2010.